Challenging board games which require mathematical and verbal skill have been popular in the United States and other countries for many years. It is generally the purpose of these games, as with the present invention, to provide a challenge to the player which will test either mathematical or verbal skills, as well as strategic skills wherein blocking and sequencing tactics are used.
One of the more popular games in the United States has been sold under the trade name of Scrabble and includes a board defining a rectangular matrix of playing positions and a plurality of tile pieces, each marked with an individual letter. The players score points by sequencing the tile pieces, contiguous by rank or file, so that words to be found in a standard dictionary are formed.
A number of mathematical board games which have educational as well as entertainment value have been known in the past. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,114 discloses a mathematical game wherein the ranks and files of the board are each marked with a number and an overlay of the board includes a sign indicative of an arithmetic operation. Part of the object of the game is to place a tile bearing an indicium of the appropriate answer in the appropriate position on the board so that the number on the playing piece represents the result of the operator working on the rank number and the file number.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,342,493 shows a game of similar construction where ranks and files are numbered and tokens bearing indicia representative of mathematic operations of the rank and file numbers are placed on the board.
U.S. Pat No. 3,744,153 to Van Es shows another mathematical board game wherein the ranks and files of the playing surface are divided by a grid wherein elements of the grid dividing the ranks and files each bear a symbol indicative of a mathematical operation. A plurality of game pieces inscribed with particular digits and additional signs for mathematical operations are provided.
More recently, U.S. Pat No. 4,283,058 to de Cadier discloses a board game having an irregular matrix of playing positions and a number of tile pieces bearing numerical indicia. An object of the game is to provide, along the irregular path defined by the matrix, sequences of numerically contiguous integers.
Additionally, board game apparatus including both verbal and numerical playing pieces has been shown in U.S. Pat No. 4,243,225 to Levinrad.
While the prior art board games provide entertainment and education for the players, the prior art does not disclose a board game wherein a challenge of strategy is presented to the players such that players are presented with a choice at each turn whether to attempt to continue a sequence begun by the player, or to spend a turn in blocking a growing sequence of the opponent. Furthermore, there is need in the art for a mathematical board game with simple straightforward rules which require that the players think in terms of both board game strategy and summations of numbers.